Most folks who live in these yonder parts of New York state don't think much about buffalo wings. We just eat them. But thanks to Maros Barek, the bone-chewing Slovak soundman who traveled around New York state with filmmaker Matt Reynolds on "The Great Chicken Wing Hunt," I now comprehend the significance of chicken-wingdom to the national psyche.

"Wings, to America," he says, "is like sheep-cheese dumplings to Slovakia."

And I don't have to know a thing about sheep-cheese dumplings to understand his point. Wings 'r' us. And why not? As someone else observes in Reynolds' film, at least they're an indigenous food. Hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza: they all arrived from other lands. The buffalo wing is American, born and bred, custom-made for packing away with a chug of beer and a few hours of football.

"The Great Chicken Wing Hunt," which screened earlier this week at the Spectrum, is streaming all over the place now: at Amazon, iTunes, Xbox, elsewhere. The movie follows Reynolds, his ragtag band of American judges and his Slovak crew — including his own beleaguered girlfriend — as they barnstorm New York state towns on a quest to find the greatest buffalo wing, the apogee of oleaginous white meat, the be-all and end-all of spicy red bar food. Over 16 days, they traveled 2,672 miles, stopped at 72 bars and restaurants, ate around 4,000 wings and consumed, by their estimate, approximately 400,000 calories.

Each wing species was rated from 0 to 10 on appearance, aroma, sauce (consistency and heat), meat (texture and greasiness) and overall taste. For a wing to be an official contender, it had to meet the classic criteria: unbreaded; coated in butter and cayenne pepper-vinegar sauce; deep-fried.

I won't divulge the winner — that would kill the suspense, especially during the finger-sucking final moments — but I will say Albany-area eateries acquitted themselves well in the hunt, out-winging several famed New York City establishments. Dorato's in Guilderland, Across the Street Pub in Albany and the now-closed Sutter's Mill & Mining Co. all wowed with their juicy meat and fresh fry oil. There's also a scene inside the radio station B95.5, and Bombers makes a cameo in a montage.

Reynolds is a native of Lyons, a Wayne County town about midway between Rochester and Syracuse. He was working for Reuters in Bratislava, Slovakia, when, inspired by the enthusiastic eastern-European response to his home-made wings, he chucked caution to the wind and resolved to chase his dream chicken across the Empire State. As escapades go, it's obsessive, nutty and nausea-inducing: imagine eating wings eight or nine times a day. But for anyone who's ever gnawed on a bone dribbling red stuff, this brisk 72-minute documentary offers messy mouthfuls of fun.

Invented almost by accident in 1964, the local delicacy came to be when a Sicilian couple found a case of the bird-part rejects at their restaurant in Buffalo — in those days, wings were tossed out or sold for pennies — and, making the best of an unwanted delivery, slathered them with cayenne pepper, fried them up and served them on a platter. "I says, 'What the hell are we eating?'" asks one old-timer in Buffalo, recalling the moment of inception. "What is this?"

Answers vary. As judges and crew wind their way from Albany to Plattsburgh to Geneva to Rochester to Buffalo, personalities fray, stomachs groan and wing obsessives everywhere reflect on what makes them so damned addictive. "Wings — it's like the porn of food. Everybody loves it," observes one wing nut early on. Another describes their spread as viral.

But maybe Maros the soundman is right. Maybe the buffalo wing is deeply encoded in our American genes, and maybe that's the chief reason we eat it. "You love it," he concludes, "because it's who you are."